The Dark Divine(55)

I turned to look at him. He sat in a kitchen chair, leaning over, his elbows on his knees. He looked down at the floor so all I could see was the top of his shaggy head.

“My ancestors fought the forces of hell for many years. They seemed like an unwavering force against evil; only the devil figured out the flaw in their armor—the flaw that’s in all of us. The Hounds had been blessed with an animal essence that made them strong and agile, but they were still human, with human emotions. What they didn’t realize is that the animal, the wolf that lived inside of them, fed on those emotions. The negative ones particularly: pride, jealousy, lust, fear, hate.

“The devil nurtured those feelings. As the Hounds grew more prideful—believing they were superior to all other humans—the wolf inside grew. It influenced their thoughts, their actions, devoured pieces of their souls. Their blessing became their curse.

“They turned their backs on God and his mission. They despised mortals and were hated and feared by them. And then the wolf started to lust for the blood of the ones the Hounds had once sworn to protect. And when a Hound gives in to that bloodlust—as most of them do—and he commits a true predatory act—tries to kill someone—the wolf takes control. It now has the power to take over the Hound’s form at will, becoming an embodied wolf. It holds the Hound’s mortal soul ransom as it hunts and ravages and kills.”

“Is that where the name Urbat comes from?” I asked. “The Dogs of Death?”

He nodded. “There are many names. Hundreds, actually. The Skin-Walkers, Loup-Garou, Oik, Varkolak, Varulv. The name you are probably most familiar with is Werewolf.”

“Werewolf? Your family are werewolves?” I stepped back. “Are you … Are you a …?”

“A wolf in boy’s clothing?” He wasn’t joking. “I’m a hybrid actually. My mother was full human. My father was the Kalbi. He was the beast.” Daniel looked up at me. “What I told you about the Urbat living in packs was true. They live together for protection and kinship.” He fingered his necklace. “Many of them try to control the wolf; others like the taste of blood. My father was one of the latter. He challenged the alpha of his pack and lost. The alpha banished him instead of ripping out his throat—that was a big mistake.

“My father wandered for a while. But a wolf’s greatest instinct is for a pack, a family. He ended up in Rose Crest, where he chose a woman he could dominate. He tried living as a mortal with her. But then I came into the picture. I think he sensed he wouldn’t be able to control me as easily … and that made him crazy. I drove him to hunting again.”

“Your father”—I could barely bring myself to ask—“he was the Markham Street Monster, wasn’t he?” I thought about how his father seemed to sleep all day. How he worked a night shift at a warehouse near the shelter on Markham. How all those strange things stopped happening around the time he skipped town. “He killed all those people.”

Daniel lowered his head even more. He didn’t need to answer.

“And you were born with the wolf’s essence, too?”

Daniel reached down and scooped up a few shards of broken plate. He held them in his open palm. “My wolf wasn’t as strong when I was younger—probably because I wasn’t a purebred. Gabriel says there are some descendants of the Hounds who are so mixed in breed they probably don’t feel it much at all.” He closed his hand over the bits of glass and squeezed. He winced and opened his bloody palm. “I didn’t know the truth then about my family. All I knew was that there was something very wrong with my father—which is how I discovered that I could heal faster than normal people. That I could heal myself.”

He closed his eyes and pursed his lips. It was like the cuts on his hands sucked the blood back in, then healed over into thin, jagged scars. All that remained in his hand were a few pink bits of glass.

“But as I got older, I felt the monster stirring. I fought it as hard as I could. But I’ve failed. The wolf took me over, too—turned me into a beast like my father.”

“But if the wolf took you over, that means you’ve …” I thought of Jude, of those scars on his hands and face, of the things he’d accused Daniel of. “That’s when it happened. You tried to hurt Jude, and that’s when the wolf took you over. That’s why he’s so afraid of you.”

Daniel closed his fist around the glass again. His knuckles went purple, then white. Blood snaked around his wrist. I turned away and studied the puke-pink daisies on the wall.

“The night I ran away from home,” he said, “I broke into the parish. It was after the fund-raiser for the fire repairs, and I knew your father always put off taking donations to the bank. I was already quite strong then. It only took a second to break the lock on the outside door to the balcony. The plan was to get in and get out with the money, but as I was leaving, your brother showed up. He saw me with the cash box and told me to put it back. He seemed so self-righteous, and it made me sick. The wolf told me that all of this was his fault. That I wouldn’t have even been there if it weren’t for him.”

“What do you mean?”

“I always felt the wolf drive for a pack. But I wanted a normal family. With a mother who put her child first, and a father who was steady and kind and didn’t make me tremble in my bed at night. I wanted a family like yours. I wanted to be Daniel Divine.” His voice faltered. I heard him shift in his chair. “I hated my father. I hated the monster that burned inside of me. Every time I got mad, or jealous, or … Something inside of me swelled, grew, eating me alive. It told me to hurt, to hunt. At first I thought I was going insane. I pushed it away. But somehow I knew that my father was responsible for what was happening to me. I followed him once. I saw what he would become—the things he did. I knew that was what my future held.